Uprising
by moonlighten
Summary: The UK bros vs zombies.


The UK bros in this fic are my FtF versions, but it's not set in the FtF universe for reasons of zombies.

(Inspired by _Shaun of the Dead_ , _In the Flesh_ , and, once again, the odd ideas that find their way into my head at four in the morning when I can't sleep.)  
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Kent, England**

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When England pulls up outside the house, the sun has just crested over the horizon, painting the sky in the lurid pink and purple tones of a fresh bruise.

The only sign of recent human habitation is a single car parked at an oblique angle at the side of the road, one of its front wheels mounting the pavement. It looks as though it had been abandoned in great haste.

England can hear nothing beyond the finely-tuned purr of the Bentley's idling engine. No stirring life, no dogs barking, not even bird song. Everything is so still that it seems like the world itself is holding its breath.

This unnatural peace is shattered by the creak of leather as Scotland shifts uneasily in the passenger seat. "Are you sure this is the right address?" he asks.

"For the thousandth time, yes," England says. He extracts a neatly folded post-it note from his trouser pocket and shoves it into his brother's waiting hand. "There, check it yourself if you don't believe me."

Scotland squints down at the yellow square of paper for a while, his mouth moving silently, before crumpling it into a ball and tossing it disdainfully over his shoulder. "I can't even tell if it's written in English. Your handwriting's fucking appalling."

"And no doubt your penmanship would be _impeccable_ if you'd got one of _those_ phone calls at four o'clock in the sodding morning. I'm so sorry I—"

"There's only one way to be sure, isn't there?" Wales pipes up from the back seat in the irritating, overly-chipper tone he always uses when inserting himself into disagreements that have absolutely nothing to do with him. "One of us should go and check, at least."

Despite the readiness with which this suggestion rolls off his tongue, Wales avoids England's eyes with just as much determination as Northern Ireland when England turns his head to look at them. Scotland stares resolutely out of the window at his side.

"Right," England growls. "'One of us' really means 'me', I see."

"Well, it _was_ your fuck up," Scotland says. "We'll come running straight away if you scream."

"Thank you, Scotland. It's always _so_ comforting to know I have you watching my back. From a safe distance, and cowering behind two tonnes of metal."

England jumps out of the car and then makes a point of slamming the door closed behind him before Scotland's indignant snarling reaches the coherent stage. As exit lines go, it feels unsatisfying, so he slams the boot closed too after he's retrieved his equipment from it.

It's only when he's stomping up the house's gravelled driveway, kicking up sprays of stones that sound to fall back to earth with the weight of boulders, that he realises that his actions, whilst soothing to his frazzled temper, are both short-sighted and counterproductively foolish.

He stops for a moment to take stock of his surroundings.

The small front garden and drive are encircled by boxy privet hedges, tall and dense enough to conceal a lurking human frame. But their leaves are motionless, their branches unswaying, and his quarry have neither the instincts nor the ability to lie in wait for their prey.

The house itself is a large, detached new-build, identical in every particular to each of its nearest neighbours: boxy, architecturally uninspired, and stolidly suburban.

All of its windows are dark, but as England begins to slowly approaching it again, he hears a gentle susurrus emanating from behind its prim mock-Victorian front door. It sounds very much like the drag of shambling footsteps.

His pulse quickens, and he reaches for his shotgun with one hand and the door's handle with the other. The door swings open soundlessly at his touch.

England steps into the murky, windowless hallway beyond with all the careful delicacy of a hunting cat. The noise is much louder inside, strangely repetitive – almost mechanical – and there's a sharp, synthetic scent in the air. Perhaps detergent of some kind.

He pokes his head cautiously into the first room on his right – a living room; two plump taupe sofas, hideous pink damask wallpaper – and then the second – dining room; table, six chairs, plates commemorating royal events past mounted on the walls, one of which England is missing from his own collection – but nothing is moving in either.

The door at the end of the hall is already open, framing a small window and a huge, hulking silhouetted figure; near Scotland's height but even broader.

England had been trained with muskets, then rifles, and then repeaters to always shoot for the centre mass, but his adversaries had always been humans or other nations in the past. Nowadays, he aims for the head.

The figure jolts when England cocks his gun, and then spins on its heel with surprising fluidity.

Or, perhaps, not so surprising at all, it quickly becomes clear as the figure completes its rotation, and its startled face swings into view.

"Oh," the man says quite clearly, if not exactly articulately. His gaze fixes nervously on the muzzle of England's shotgun. "Oh, I'm sorry. I mustn't have heard you knocking over the sound of the washing machine."

England's cheeks heat as he realises that he hadn't even paused to consider following that most basic rule of politeness. A few weeks ago, such a breach of etiquette would have been forgivable, but times have changed. Now, he's just some lout barging into a poor bloke's home uninvited just as he would have been pre-Uprising.

"It's quite all right," he mumbles, lowering his gun.

"I just thought I'd put a load on whilst I was waiting, and—" The man cuts himself off with an embarrassed-sounding cough. "And I'm sure you don't care about that." He tightens the belt of his dressing gown around his bulging stomach, and then strides forward, one hand outstretched. "First things first, I'm Mark Robertson."

"England." England draws the handshake out longer than is his usual wont, in apology for his earlier rudeness. "Or Arthur, if you'd prefer."

Mark nods. "I recognise you from those advert things the government put out. Made sure to memorise the number from them, just in case, but, to be honest, I never really thought I'd need it until I heard something crashing around outside in the back garden last night.

"I still thought it was more likely to just be foxes going through the bins again, but when I got up to check, well, it turned out it _was_ one of those _things_ , after all."  
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In the days following the mass exodus of the recently dead from their graves, doomsayers were eager to pronounce that the end of civilisation was nigh.

As it turned out, however, when a disease could be transmitted only via a bite, and its sole carriers were slow-moving, unagile, and baffled by concepts as simple as navigating a flight of stairs, it did not exactly sweep through the populace at large like the proverbial wildfire.

Added to which, the human body begins to decay at the very moment of death. Two months after the initial event, the few infected which had somehow avoided the organised cull were barely clinging onto bodily integrity, never mind their unlife.

The one which was inching along the ground on what used to be its belly near Mark Robertson's wheelie bins was little more than a skeleton held together by perished ligaments, a few scraps of parchment-like skin, and the tattered remains of a pair of trousers.

It doesn't have enough of a tongue – or, presumably, lungs – left to growl at them as the... fresher ones used to, but it gives a spirited attempt at snapping its teeth at England and his brothers until the atrophied muscles holding its bottom jaw give out and it swings free at one side.

"They're quite pathetic now, aren't they?" Wales says dolorously. "I almost feel sorry for them. And this one will probably have probably fallen to pieces by the end of the day, anyway."

Scotland chuckles without humour. "They were dead before this all began. We're just returning them to the natural order of things. Besides, the Robertsons have got a wee girl; you wouldn't want to risk her getting nipped, would you?"

"Of course not," Wales says, sounding affronted.

"Then stop your squawking." Scotland levels his own shotgun at the thing's head, but soon swings it away again. "Naw, I'd just be wasting the shells. North" – he turns, beckoning their little brother imperiously – "go fetch me my bag from the car."

"Scotland," England barks, horrified. "Mr and Mrs Robertson are probably watching."

Scotland shrugs. "They'll just be glad I'm getting rid of it. Doubt they'll much care how I go about it."

"It's crass!"

"But effective," Scotland insists. "Do you want to give it a kick and risk getting your shoes covered in rotting brains again?"

Even though every single item of clothing England had been wearing then was almost immediately incinerated, he could still smell a phantom of that stench for days afterwards, as though it had somehow sunk down into his very skin or coated the inside of his nostrils. He hurriedly shakes his head.

"Just as I thought. So you can shut up, too."

Northern Ireland reappears around the side of the house at a jog, Scotland's golf bag jouncing against his back.

Scotland's eyes narrow speculatively when he draws near. "The 9-iron, I think," he says, resting one foot against the back of the thing's cadaverous neck.

England knows that there's nothing left in the things that's human. That they were corpses even before this all began, and he and his brothers are doing their people a service by putting an end to what passes for the things' existence. He still can't bear to watch this part if he doesn't have to. He screws his eyes closed.

The soldiers they fought alongside during the early days of the Uprising used to shout 'Fore!' before Scotland swung his club; a little black humour that doubtless helped to keep their spirits and nerve up through all the terror and confusion they had to endure.

Thankfully, Scotland stays silent. The thwack of iron against bone is sickening enough on its own.  
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Through some malicious quirk of physics, air currents, or Scotland's skill with a golf club, England's shoes still manage to get splattered in putrescent gore whilst his eldest brother's remain clean as a whistle.

"You're very brave," Linda Robertson says as she watches him toe them off his feet on her back step. "Aren't you worried that some of that... gunk will get on you, and you'll... Well, you know..."

"You can't catch it from anything but saliva," England reassures her. "And, besides, my brothers and I are immune."

Something which they'd suspected to be the case from the start of it all, and soon confirmed when Wales had two of his fingers gnawed off by one of the bastards when he tried to shoo it out of his garden shed. The only ill-effects he'd suffered – besides the inevitable pain and wooziness resulting from blood loss – was a craving for offal that wore off after an hour or so.

Upon hearing that information, their bosses then ordered them to fight at the frontlines they were already manning, and then announced to the United Kingdom at large that their nations themselves were fighting in the dead-filled streets to keep them safe.

It they'd been hoping that the news would kindle the Blitz spirit in the hearts of their electorate to better help them through the dark days ahead, then their decision had been somewhat misguided. After seeing zombies – and no matter how often the press referred to them as 'shufflers' or 'horrors' or 'groaners', they were unable to overcome that particular piece of pop inculturation – lurching through their home towns, the discovery that anthropomorphic personifications of their countries lived and walked amongst them seemed almost banal in comparison, and caused hardly a ripple of interest in comparison.

In fact, England thinks that the general public actually suspect the government of inventing the whole nation thing themselves in a cynical ploy to tap into the very patriotism they were hoping would arise naturally.

Certainly no-one England has talked to during these clean-up missions have seemed to believe it, Mrs Robertson included.

"It's lucky you just happened to have an immunity to it like that, seeing as though they couldn't make a vaccine in time," she says.

England sighs. He's had this conversation too many times to count. "Yes, it is," he says, because the lie is easier than trying to explain his existence yet again. "Anyway, you should be safe enough, regardless, but I'd still advice that you don't touch the shoes or the... the remains. Someone from the police will be round soon to take them away."

"Don't you worry, we weren't planning on going anywhere near them, believe me." Mrs Robertson shudders minutely, and then manages to dredge up a smile from what England can only presume is some internal reservoir of indefatigable hospitality. "Now, I've just put the kettle on. What would you say to a nice cup of tea?"

England says a very heartfelt 'please' to that as Mrs Robertson ushers him into the kitchen, where Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are already seated around the small table alongside Mr Robertson, who beams up at England as he approaches them and says, "So, are you _the_ Arthur, then? The stories do say he'd come back when England was in its greatest peril, right?"

"No," England says, then rather more emphatically when he catches sight of Wales' scowl, "No, I'm definitely not him. And I don't think he—"

"If this whole nonsense didn't count as 'peril' for him, what would?" Mr Robertson scoffs, clearly unimpressed. "Lazy bugger."  
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If King Arthur did ever return to resume his mantle, England imagines he would receive far greater plaudits than tea, a slice of Mr Robertson's rather inexpertly frosted carrot cake, and a subdued round of handshakes and 'thank yous' on the Robertsons front doorstep, hushed to avoid waking their daughter.

Still, England would not ask for anything more even if it was on offer. After all the quiet years of paperwork and parliamentary procedure, it's exhilarating to be able to offer some practical help to his people again.

It's reward enough to see the Robertsons' street begin to wake up around him: curtains being thrown back, doors opened, and curious stares being directed their way by passing dog walkers and other such early risers.

It's reward enough to know he played his part in ensuring this morning is undoubtedly very much like the mornings this street had welcomed before the Uprising began.


End file.
